In his stunning pre-published book manuscript Joint Criminal Enterprise: Why Everything They Told You About Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs is Wrong, Andy Wilcoxson — the only American to follow the Milosevic trial — mentions the lengths to which the Hague tribunal goes in order to make the crime fit the punishment when prosecuting Serbs.

In addition to demonstrating what many already know — that no genocide took place in Srebrenica — Wilcoxson mentions another little-known fact: that the Clinton administration told Bosnian wartime president Alija Izetbegovic that if he wanted a NATO intervention, he’d need to cough up 5,000 bodies. That is why Srebrenica was sacrificed purposefully by the Bosnian-Muslim government, which gave orders to the recently acquitted war criminal Naser Oric to keep the Muslim fighters’ families there despite UN and Serbian efforts to evacuate them:

THE SO-CALLED “GENOCIDE” IN SREBRENICA

The Tribunal found that the Bosnian war was “genocide” in its judgment against Bosnian-Serb general Radislav Kristic [in 2001] for crimes in Srebrenica.

I put the term “genocide” in quotation marks because the Tribunal changed the definition of the word so that they could use it in reference to Srebrenica.

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”63

Genocide is a crime of intent, yet The Hague Tribunal concluded that: “the existence of a plan or policy is not a legal ingredient of the crime of genocide.”64

The logical question that arises is this: How can you prove that genocidal intent existed when you can’t show that a genocidal plan or policy existed?

In Srebrenica there is no evidence of a genocidal plan. The Tribunal found that “the record contains no statements by members of the VRS [Bosnian-Serb Army] Main Staff indicating that the killing of the Bosnian Muslim men was motivated by genocidal intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica.”65
…
What the Tribunal failed to adequately explain was why the Bosnian-Serb military sent Srebrenica’s women and children to safety, if their objective was to “destroy all the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica.” If genocide, the physical destruction of the ethnic group, was the Bosnian-Serb objective in Srebrenica, then why would they mostly limit the killing to military-aged men?

The Bosnian-Serb military’s decision to transfer, rather than to kill, the Muslim women and children in Srebrenica undermines the Tribunal’s finding of genocidal intent. It is completely at odds with the sort of killing that has characterized all previously recognized instances of modern genocide…Any war can be called “genocide” if you use the ridiculous definition that has been concocted for Srebrenica.

VENGEANCE: AN ALTERNATIVE MOTIVE

Although “genocide” did not occur in Srebrenica, there is evidence that some Muslim POWs were executed.

Srebrenica was supposed to be a UN Safe Area, but the UN never demilitarized the enclave. The 28th Division of the Muslim army was stationed there under the command of Nasir Oric, a convicted war criminal before the ICTY.68 [The conviction, which carried a sentence of two years time served, was overturned this summer.]

In 1995 Bill Schiller of the Toronto Star interviewed Oric and was shown videos filmed by his troops in and around Srebrenica.

Schiller wrote that he sat in Oric’s living room watching a video of what might have been called “Nasir Oric’s Greatest Hits”. There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing. Schiller wrote, “Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.”

“We ambushed them,” Oric said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen. The next sequence of bodies had been done in by explosives: “We launched those guys to the moon,” he boasted.

According to Schiller’s recollection, when footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: “We killed 114 Serbs there.”69

The former UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia, General Philippe Morillon, testified about Oric during Slobodan Milosevic’s trial in The Hague.

Morillon described one meeting he had with Oric, saying: “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself…According to my recollection, he didn’t even look for an excuse. It was simply a statement: One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”70

Morillon described Srebrenica as a “hellish circle of revenge.” He said that Oric “engaged in attacks [on Serbs] during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.”71

The presiding trial judge asked Morillon point-blank: “Are you saying, then, General, that what happened in 1995 was a direct reaction to what Naser Oric did to the Serbs two years before?” Morillon responded, “Yes. Yes, Your Honour. I am convinced of that.”72

Genocide is “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. Revenge is an entirely different matter, because the intent is to kill those who have wronged you, not to exterminate an ethnic group.

Another indicator that revenge — not genocide — motivated killings was videotape that surfaced at the Milosevic trial on June 1, 2005. The video was played in open court by the prosecution but was never entered into evidence because the prosecution could not authenticate it.

The video showed six men, identified by the prosecutor as Muslims from Srebrenica, being executed by men whom the prosecutor claimed were a Serb unit called the Skorpions. One of the victims can be heard on the video asking his executioner to wait, but the response that he got was, “When you were killing Serbs you didn’t wait.”

If the prosecutor is correct, and the victims were in fact Muslims from Srebrenica, then it is proof that the men executed on the tape were killed because they were thought to have killed Serbs, not because they were Muslims.

THE EXAGGERATED TOLL OF THE SREBRENICA MASSACRE

According to any number of Western press reports, the Bosnian-Serb Army executed 8,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica.

The number 8,000 comes from an International Red Cross (ICRC) report stating that 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims were missing after the Bosnian Serbs took the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995. The media jumped to the conclusion that the Serbs must have executed all 8,000 of these missing Muslims.

The ICRC’s report states that “After the fall of the enclave, the ICRC received over 10,000 requests for family news from civilians who were transferred to Tuzla in central Bosnia. About 2,000 of these requests were from different family members seeking the same individuals. An in-depth analysis has shown that the remaining 8,000 requests fall into two categories: about 5,000 concern individuals who apparently fled the enclave before it fell, while the remaining 3,000 relate to persons reportedly arrested by the Bosnian-Serb forces.”73

Three thousand of the missing were arrested by the Bosnian Serbs and 5,000 were gone before the Serbs got there. Furthermore, analysis of OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] voter registration records has shown that 3,016 of the “missing” Muslims turned out to vote in Bosnia’s 1996 elections — 16 months after they were supposed to have been “executed” by the Serbs.74

Evidence presented by the ICTY prosecution, nine years after the fall of Srebrenica (in 2004), showed that 2,541 bodies had been exhumed from mass graves around Srebrenica.75

According to the testimony of Dean Manning, an Australian forensic expert commissioned by the ICTY prosecution to compile a report on Srebrenica, 1,175 of the exhumed corpses had died of gunshot wounds, 67 died from shrapnel wounds or blast injuries, 11 died from a combination of gunshot and shrapnel, and the cause of death was undetermined for the remainder of the bodies.76

According to Manning’s report, 390 ligatures and cloth blindfolds were dug up from the graves.77

Going by the forensic evidence alone, one can assert that about 2,500 persons from Srebrenica lost their lives and out of that total at least 390 were executed. The claim that 8,000 people were executed lacks evidential foundation.

Writing in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, Gen. Lewis Mackenzie, the former commander of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia, stated that: “Evidence given at The Hague war crimes tribunal casts serious doubt on the figure of ‘up to’ 8,000 Bosnian Muslims massacred. That figure includes ‘up to’ 5,000 who have been classified as missing. More than 2,000 bodies have been recovered in and around Srebrenica, and they include victims of the three years of intense fighting in the area. The math just doesn’t support the scale of 8,000 killed.”78

While it is undoubtedly true that some of the Muslims from Srebrenica were executed, there is no indication that the numbers even begin to approach the scale alleged.

A fact that goes almost completely unreported is that the fighting in Srebrenica was provoked by a Muslim attack on the Bosnian-Serb Army…In paragraph 77 of its August 2, 2001, judgment in the Radislav Kristic trial, The Hague Tribunal acknowledged that “a percentage of the bodies in the gravesites examined may have been of men killed in combat.”

MUSLIM ATTACK PRECIPITATED MASSACRE

As Manning’s report noted, several of the corpses exhumed from around Srebrenica died from shrapnel wounds and blast injuries which would be consistent with death in combat, but not death by execution. Death by gunshot is also possible in combat, but does not preclude the possibility of an execution as death by shrapnel wounds or blast injuries does.

On July 10-11, 1995, approximately 15,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica, under orders from the Muslim Army, mobilized and set out to break through the Bosnian-Serb lines towards Tuzla. The group was a mixture of soldiers and male civilians; some had weapons and military training while others didn’t.79

When this group attempted to force its way through the confrontation line they encountered fierce resistance from the Bosnian-Serb Army. The Serbs defended their position and started shelling the column of men advancing against them from Srebrenica.

The men and boys in that column were sent like lambs to the slaughter by the Muslim authorities. Most made it all the way through to Tuzla, but others weren’t as lucky. It is difficult to say how all of those people died. Some died fighting with a rifle in their hands; others were caught in the crossfire; some committed suicide to escape the horrible situation they were in; and some were captured and executed.

Without a doubt, the Muslim authorities bear the greatest responsibility for what happened at Srebrenica. They abused Srebrenica’s status as a UN Safe Area by using it as a military base to attack the Bosnian Serbs.

The Muslim authorities deliberately provoked the Bosnian Serbs to go into Srebrenica. Two weeks before Srebrenica fell, the Muslims attacked a small, undefended Serbian village near Srebrenica. At 4:30 AM on June 26, 1995, Muslim forces from Srebrenica attacked the Serb village of Visnjica, burning houses, killing livestock, and forcing Serbian civilians to flee for their lives.80

Then, once the Muslims had the Serbs good and angry, they sent a poorly trained and poorly equipped group of 15,000 men and boys from Srebrenica to attack the Bosnian-Serb front line.

The Muslims wanted their people to get slaughtered so that they could portray themselves as victims and give NATO a justification to attack the Bosnian Serbs. The existence of this plan is no secret; the Muslims themselves freely admit that it existed.

In 1998 Hakija Meholjic, the Muslim police chief in Srebrenica during the war, gave an interview to the Sarajevo newspaper Dani. He said that Izetbegovic told him during a meeting in September 1993: “You know, I was offered by Clinton in April that the (Serbian) Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, and then there will be a military intervention.”81 [Hakija also told “a Dutch TV station that Clinton had promised Izetbegovic NATO military intervention against the Serbs as far back as 1993 if at least 5,000 Muslims could be killed in Srebrenica.”]

Sefer Halilovic, the chief-of-staff of the Muslim armed forces during the war, admitted during his testimony at The Hague Tribunal that Izetbegovic’s regime intentionally abandoned the Srebrenica Muslims. He said, “the command of the 2nd Corps and the General Staff knew when the operation on Srebrenica started, but from a series of testimonies, the people who were in Srebrenica, both from military and political structures, we can clearly see that they asked for help, both of the command of the 2nd Corps and the command of the General Staff and President Izetbegovic, but that they did not receive that assistance…”82

Ibran Mustafic, a founding member of Izetbegovic’s SDA party, a member of the Bosnian parliament, and a resident of Srebrenica, told the July 14, 1996, issue of the Slobodna Bosna newspaper that: “[The] scenario for the betrayal of Srebrenica was consciously prepared. Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business; if you want the names, figure it out yourself. I understood the situation in Srebrenica and, you can trust me on this, had I not been prevented by a group of criminals, many more inhabitants of Srebrenica would be alive today. Had I received an order to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order without thinking and would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica so that I can give him a gun and let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to a catastrophe. The orders came from Sarajevo and Kakanj.”83

In 2005 former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke told the Sarajevo broadcaster TV Hyatt that “As far as Srebrenica goes, Srebrenica is, uh… is a great tragedy which should not have been permitted to occur. But it did and I tell you that I was under initial instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa and I felt that was wrong.”84 Holbrooke later admitted to the domovina.net website that his instructions to “sacrifice Srebrenica” had come from Clinton’s national security advisor Anthony Lake.

So there we have it. Izetbegovic’s regime collaborated with NATO to create conditions for a slaughter in Srebrenica to justify NATO’s attack against the Bosnian Serbs.

It may seem unconscionable that somebody could deliberately put his own people in a position to be slaughtered, but Alija Izetbegovic’s philosophy was that “For all Muslims there is but one solution: to continue to fight, to strengthen and broaden [Islam], from day to day, from year to year, no matter the victims and no matter the time.”85

NON-SERB UNIT EXECUTED SREBRENICA MUSLIMS

It is interesting to note that non-Serbs carried out a large share of the executions of Srebrenica Muslims.

Drazen Erdemovic, the only individual to be prosecuted by The Hague Tribunal for directly participating in the execution of Muslims from Srebrenica isn’t even a Serb. He’s a Bosnian Croat.86

According to Erdemovic, his unit was predominantly made up of non-Serbs. Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, he said, “I joined a unit that later came to be known as the 10th Sabotage unit or detachment, which consisted of eight to ten soldiers, most of whom were Croats. There was one Muslim and one Slovene. I joined that unit I think in April of 1994, and this unit belonged to the army of Republika Srpska.”87

The Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic led the way in the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the executions of Srebrenica Muslims.

In March of 1996 Erdemovic was arrested by police in Novi Sad, Serbia, 10 days after entering Serbian territory from Croatia. He was charged with the execution of Muslims from Srebrenica and sent to prison.88

The Serbian authorities charged Erdemovic with war crimes against the civilian population under Article 142, paragraph 1 of the Penal Code of Yugoslavia. Had he stood trial in Serbia he would have faced at least 20 years in prison and possibly the death penalty, but The Hague Tribunal came to his rescue and protected him from any real punishment.

The following is an exchange between Milosevic and Erdemovic, who was testifying as a prosecution witness, at The Hague Tribunal:89

MILOSEVIC: Mr. Erdemovic, you were not tried by Yugoslav courts for this act [the killings], but your extradition was requested. You know that. Isn’t that right?

ERDEMOVIC: Yes.

MILOSEVIC: And that is how you arrived here [at The Hague Tribunal] and you were put on trial here; is that right?

ERDEMOVIC: Yes.

MILOSEVIC: Precisely for the act as it is described in the criminal report and the request for the conduct of an investigation issued by the Yugoslav authorities; is that right?

ERDEMOVIC: Yes.

MILOSEVIC: As far as I have been able to see from these documents, you yourself confessed that you personally had killed about 100 men; is that right?

ERDEMOVIC: Yes.

MILOSEVIC: But the total was about 1,200, according to this report. You said 1,000 a moment ago.

ERDEMOVIC: Yes. I said between 1,000 and 1,200.

MILOSEVIC: And is it beyond dispute that for killing more than a thousand men and for personally killing about 100 men you were sentenced to a prison term of five years? Is that right?

ERDEMOVIC: Yes.

[…]

MILOSEVIC: Tell me, how much time did you spend in prison altogether for all these acts you were charged with and condemned for?

ERDEMOVIC: I can’t remember.

MILOSEVIC: You didn’t even spend a full five years, did you?

ERDEMOVIC: No. But that wasn’t a decision taken by the Prosecution to release me. In fact, the Prosecution opposed my early release from prison, but the President of the Tribunal, Judge McDonald, decided that I should be released earlier.

The Srebrenica genocide hoax is one of many replays of anti-Serb propaganda — which we can witness even today as the U.S. helps Greater Albania wrest Kosovo from a sovereign state — serving the counterintuitively aligned interests of Western manipulators and Greater Islam.

Days after the fall of Srebrenica, on July 17, 1995, Karadzic adviser Jovan Zametica issued the following statement:

Over the past few days the international media, aided and abetted by the Muslim authorities, have indulged in an orgy of uncritical reporting concerning the events in Srebrenica. Allegations of torture, murder, rape, and deportation of Muslim civilians are made repeatedly without any independent verification. The truth is that none of these things have happened. UNPROFOR has been on the ground in Srebrenica throughout, and it can testify to the fact that the Muslim civilian population was treated well by the Serbs. Moreover, stories that the civilians were “driven out” are completely false, since their evacuation was agreed in advance with the representatives of Muslim civilian authorities. They themselves requested evacuation because of the fear of the Serbs returning to their homes in Srebrenica — given that the Muslims have in the past committed appalling atrocities against Serb civilians in the region. The aim of Muslim propaganda is to cover up the fact that the Muslim authorities are deliberately worsening the plight of their own people, manipulating world opinion and attempting to draw the international community as an active participant on their side in this conflict.

Please note that the claim of Serbs “driving Muslim civilians out” of Srebrenica is being recycled yet again in the current rash of Western-swallowed and regurgitated propaganda in the midst of the Karadzic capture.

A year before Srebrenica fell, Radovan Karadzic wrote the following desperate letter to UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali in reference to the notorious “Serbian Siege of Sarajevo”:

Feb. 8, 1994

Your Excellency,

You are of course aware of the tragic event that took place in the Sarajevo market place on Saturday. Ever since, there has been a torrent of world-wide accusations against the Serbs. The campaign has been unprecedented in its ferocity, the level of emotion involved, but most important in its blindness both to the wider circumstances of the incident in Sarajevo and to circumstances of [the] incident itself.

As you know, the UNPROFOR [UN Protection Force] report concluded that “the round could have been fired from either B&H [Bosnia-Herzegovina] or BSA [Bosnian-Serb Army] positions.” Our own indications, from sources in Muslim-held Sarajevo, are that a shell reinforced with plastic explosive was hurled at the market place from a neighbouring building. In any event, although the culprit has not been identified, the world media and many politicians have declared the Serbs the perpetrators of the atrocity.

We have been here before. A sense of deja vu is overwhelming for those who are familiar with Muslim tactics in Sarajevo. In the effort to generate world sympathy for its aims, the Muslim leadership is not above sacrificing innocent civilians to attain those aims. The fundamental truth is that the Muslims are not interested in a peace settlement based on compromise. They want the whole of Sarajevo and the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nothing else will do for them. Hence, Your Excellency, there has been no significant progress in the peace talks.

The day before yesterday we met the co-chairman of the ICFY [International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia] and agreed with them to start exploring the possibility of pacifying Sarajevo District in advance of an overall peace settlement. But we absolutely insist that the matter of the market place massacre be cleared up first. We demand a thorough and impartial investigation, to be carried out by UNPROFOR, with experts from the Serbian and Muslim sides taking part. Particular attention should be paid to ballistics and to pathological findings with regard to the victims. At stake here is the fate of a whole people as well as the fate of an entire region of Europe. I urge Your Excellency to exert your influence in order to allow the truth to emerge.

Yours Sincerely,
Dr Radovan Karadzic
President, Republic of Serbia

On June 6, 1996, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) carried the following item:

“UN Admits Muslims Responsible for February 1994 Sarajevo Massacre”

New York - For the first time, a senior U.N. official has admitted the existence of a secret U.N. report that blames the Bosnian Muslims for the February 1994 massacre of Muslims at a Sarajevo market.

Yasushi Akashi, the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the former head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, told the German Press Agency dpa that the secret report is “no secret.”

An international outcry over the massacre, in which 68 civilians perished at Markale marketplace, led directly to a toughening of Western policy towards the Serbs, who were widely blamed for the incident.

But there have been persistent rumors at the United Nations ever since that a U.N. report clearly blamed the Muslims for firing on their own people in order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their side against the Serbs.

Until Thursday, U.N. officials strongly denied the report existed, even after it was quoted in press reports. Akashi told dpa that not only did the first report exist, but that some journalists already had a copy. He said the details were in a 1995 story by U.S. journalist David Binder, who quoted from the confidential report.

According to Binder, the report said U.N. peacekeepers were prevented by Muslim police from entering the site in the aftermath of the explosion. No doctors were allowed on the scene and the 197 victims were carried away to a hospital within 25 minutes.

After studying the crater left by the mortar shell and the distribution of the shrapnel, the report concluded that the shell was fired from behind Muslim lines. U.N. monitors reported no Serbian shelling that day from points near the marketplace.

The official U.N. report that was subsequently released said the evidence as to who fired the shell was inconclusive, since it originated from an area where Muslim and Serb lines were very close. The two reports represented divergent views, but the United Nations chose to publish the neutral report and keep the other secret.

The incident led to a NATO ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.

At the time, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said: “It’s very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people, and therefore, although we do not exactly know what the facts are, it would seem to us that the Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of responsibility.”

I met Karadzic briefly in the town of Jajce in Bosnia across the Serbian border in 1993. I also spent a couple of hours with his vice president, Nikola Koljevic. I was a friend and colleague of Karadzic’s foreign policy advisor, John Zametica. Koljevic and Zametica were not genocidal Hitlers. Nor was Slobodan Milosevic. Nor is Karadzic.

I once asked Koljevic why Serbs were shelling civilians in Sarajevo. He told me that Bosnian Serb forces were untrained militias that act spontaneously. Muslim forces located in heavily civilian areas would fire at Serb militias in the surrounding hills, inviting overwhelming retaliation against their positions in civilian areas. There was deliberate provocation by Muslim forces deliberately hidden among civilians to invite retaliatory fire at their positions.

When Americans do this in Iraq and elsewhere it is called “collateral damage.” When Serb forces did this in Bosnia, it was labeled genocide.

It’s no wonder that Karadzic was offered the immunitydeal that Richard Holbrooke todaydeniesoffering him. And it’s no wonder that, as with Milosevic, attempts were made on Karadzic’s life, which he convincinglyargues is in peril at the Hague, where at least three Serbs have died under mysterious circumstances in the midst of a trial or sentence. In Karadzic’s case, the Western worry is that too much unwelcome information would come out in the course of a trial.

And of course, here is what the Serbs and anyone else willing to negotiate Yugoslavia’s breakup peacefully were up against: